In the book these riots and the riots at Dhaka become the occasion for the acid test of our recording systems whether of our history or of our newspapers. The friendship of the Datta- Chaudhary family and the Prices goes back to the Colonial times when their English grandfather, Tresawsen had come to Calcutta as an agent of a steel-manufacturing company and had later become a factory owner. This further becomes an instance of a personal space (and if these addresses can be seen as personal narratives) outdoing a public one. The Shadow Lines (1988) is a Sahitya Akademi Award-winning novel[1] by Indian writer Amitav Ghosh. Nations are born, nations die, the cartographers and politicians rearrange political spaces but these locations are remarkably immune to these designs. They assign meanings to happenings and things around them differently. His suggestions of its existence are brushed aside by his cousin Ila whose opinion is supported by the club’s absence, however the external evidence fails to satisfy him and after much effort they find out from an old timer that the club had indeed existed at the exact spot that he had pointed out and that it had been targetted during a war and reduced to rubble. The role of the narrator is also crucial to the structure of the novel, which is one of story within story told in a non-linear way. The driver whispers something in, ...all. These intricate addresses have a strong power of evocation and add to the verisimilitude of the narrative. she basically gives up her Indian identity in order to fit in, which she mistakingly sees as freeing (dating Nick + the conversation with her uncle and the narrator in the bar scene). However an indicator of this deep complex does surface later. For me, the most poignant parts of the book are the times when the narrator contemplates the meaning of maps and borders, or the difficulty of rendering meaning to violence with language. The original text plus a side-by-side modern translation of. I don't exactly understand what it was that I loved about this book. So there is a glory to wars, which is also violence, but one that makes sense within our defined notions of the ideas described above. Our. reality or a flashback? That's what I told my sons when they took the trains. Why doesn't Th'amma like Ila? ...this isn't incorrect and meant that Robi was Tha'mma's favorite. Amitav Ghosh is one of India's best-known writers. One of the important facets of Tha’mma’s worldview that we have to consider is her perception of historical events and her notions of Nationhood and Nationalism. Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines recounts a family story before and after the Indian Partition of 1947. A moving read, if not a happy one. As I continued the realisation hit me that it might never happen, however on this point I was wrong we finally find out on the last two pages! -Graham S. The timeline below shows where the character Mayadebi appears in. The book in describing Tridib of the addas and his behavioural pattern there and by ascribing to him certain statements (he lies to the audience about his just concluded trip to London) only highlights a very important issue that the book deals with: The perspicuity of vision that the narrator cultivates thereafter by this lesson is evident in his extraordinary reactions to the space of London during his visit. She further states that the acknowledgement of the Bengali community within the narrative is a feature of the oral narrative where the narrative is the secret of the community which further links to the idea that narratives are connected to an identifiable group.